Bibere
by scullyseviltwin
Summary: It truly IS funny, the things you remember and the things you don't Sara muses.


_Thanks go to Le Anni for the readthrough and the OMG TITLE!

* * *

_ How many different uses were there for cranberry juice when I was young? There were so many make-believe things that we could substitute for a glass of dark, sparkling cranberry and it boggles my mind to think upon it now. How things morph, how things change, how thing shift from day to day while we don't even notice their metamorphosis.

In the fall, the onset of sweet autumn, there was always one specific purpose it would fill. It's morbid really, when I think about it now; how strange I was, even before. The urge would always set in around the end of September, just as the maple leaves began to turn and the breeze that blew off of the bay was slightly icy rather than pleasantly warm. It was during that time that we would all cling to the excitement that buzzed around Halloween and though the little girls were princesses and witches and the boys were zombies and action heroes, we all wanted to be vampires. All of us.

Josh, my older brother, played that game with us until he turned twelve. Then he became too cool to hang with the younger kids, but he did leave us with his legacy-cranberry juice. Our blood. The life-force of our little band of pretend nightwalkers slurping the stuff down, not knowing that what we were drinking was actually healthy for us-blasphemy!-just that we, as the undead, had to drink it or we would die, be snuffed out by eternity.

It was the wrong color and the entirely wrong consistency, but it didn't stop us from running our fingers around the edges of our glasses and saying, "I vant to suck your blood."

Gallons were consumed in the month between the beginning and end of October. Gallons purchased with quarters saved and gallons spilled too as we used our best Transylvanian accents, draped in makeshift capes made from Billy Zimmermann's mom's old curtains.

When I turned twelve, something happened and I drifted from our vampire games into a world where the girls spent time with only the girls and the boys spent time with only the boys. Even after... after... I was still lingering in that world of mono-sex friends. No more boys, no living forever. Just living for the moment.

We used cranberry juice then too. Suzanne and Sylvia and Juanita and I would snag "grown up" magazines from Sylvia's older sister and attempt to play dress up. There was never really any extra garments around to play with, so we'd pick through our own meager wardrobe and exchange clothes, one of us the model, the others the judges in a silly little pageant that no one ever ended up winning. Afterwards, we'd hold our glasses daintily and sip the juice as if it were a fine wine we were tasting, and we, fine young socialites having a lovely night on the town before we returned to our wealthy, rich and of course loving husbands.

The "wine" flowed even as our friendships ended, we carried on with underage drinking and dreams of men who would love us no matter what.

In high school I drank it solely as a lunchtime beverage, accompanying bad cafeteria sludge and advanced calculus. It was a shred of memory, that liquid in a flimsy plastic cup or a bright, washed out Mickey cup and when I looked at it, I could remember all the good times. When I tasted it, I knew I wasn't just another nobody; I had a past; I was Sara Sidle, vampire, model, socialite and so much more because I could make it happen, even if it was just in my head. And every day at lunch I'd get a can of Ocean Spray (fifty-five cents at the time) from the vending machine and sit at a table by myself (because I wanted to) and think of all the things I could bring myself to be.

College introduced me to the world of Cape Codders (or, if I was to order it properly at a bar-excuse me, bah-a Cape Coddah), a bitter drink that stung my tongue and made me struggle to keep it down, keep the cringe off of my face. A drink that made me look at the glass like it had slapped me across the face, as if it had somehow insulted me. A cheap concoction that we ladled out at parties because, while it wasn't cheap beer or bad tequila, it was still _cheap_ and easy to make, and was drunk at country clubs and fancy soirees that most, if not all, of my fellow co-eds attended.

My preferences changed then, and I couldn't taste the stuff without thinking of a monster hangover, of the way my head throbbed with a bit of vodka was stirred in, of the sandpaper tongue and the watering.

My beverage of choice then became the simplicity of orange juice, housed in those little cardboard huts, just waiting for a straw to be poked in. Always Tropicana, never Minute Made. And never screwdrivers, I never mixed anything with it for fear that I'd lose another love, that it too would be warped and my perception would change.

I couldn't even stand to look at the sweet, dark color of the cranberry juice without becoming so sad, for all that I'd gained from it and all that I had lost. Summer days and autumn evenings wondering why I couldn't live forever; nights alone in a makeshift room, sticking my tongue out to see how dark I'd stained it _this_ time, how the color complimented my features. Lost days, all gone, begging not to be forgotten.

Now, well, I just don't care, because he serves it to me with breakfast, alongside sloppy pancakes and cantaloupe wedges and I drink it because he gives it to me with a smile and a kiss. Memories in glasses, in cups, through straws and in bottles; things that I wouldn't change for anything. I drink it because he's thoughtful and sweet and new memories can be made where the old ones left off.


End file.
